


the art of fugue

by heartdecay



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone is Female, Angst, Codependency, F/F, It’s more foreboding than angsty, Semi-Public Sex, Unreliable Narrator, piano lessons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:02:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24532756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartdecay/pseuds/heartdecay
Summary: Never fall out of love. Love is the only way out. Love as long as you can!Kaede and Shuichi fall in love as time passes by outside.(F/F Akamatsu/Saihara.)
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede/Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 17
Kudos: 41





	the art of fugue

****

_Four._

Kaede reclines against the shiny black case of her laboratory’s piano, her back just shy of touching the keys. She rubs Shuichi's sides with her knees. The morning light reflects in a caustic sheen across Kaede’s thighs that bounces onto the skin of Shuichi’s bared midsection. 

“Play me, Shuichi,” Kaede says. She balances the command in her words with encouraging softness. “Show me what you’ve learned.” 

Shuichi shifts under her, biting her lip. The solidity of Shuichi’s thighs comfort her even as they tighten with her usual inhibition. Shuichi’s fingers lock around the edge of the playing bench as if to tether both herself and Kaede to it, her arms fastening Kaede’s legs to her sides around her lap. Kaede feels it too, like if Shuichi were to let go right now, they would both float away. It must be the airy stillness of the morning, Kaede thinks. How improper to disturb it so early. She leans seductively, unveiling her panties as the pleats of her skirt fall in a useless pile over her stomach.

“You,” Shuichi starts. She pulls a proper breath into her lungs with fluttery eyes. “You have got to stop talking like that. I-I get so embarrassed I completely freeze up…”

“Geez, Shuichi,” Kaede laughs easily, nonchalant if only to convince herself. “You’d think it was the first time we’d ever done this. I really thought we made progress last time, too. Ugh…”

Put on the spot, Shuichi seems too embarrassed to not have her hands on Kaede. She puts her hands on Kaede. Kaede opens her legs up on contact, dropping her knees to the sides of her body and locking her ankles behind Shuichi’s waist, splayed like the wings of a butterfly. Shuichi, to her equal parts amusement and disappointment, is obviously struggling to not just go ahead and _look_. Her eyes volley up and down Kaede’s body, rebounding upward before her gaze travels past the navel. Kaede cannot believe how chaste she is. Polite, even when Kaede is begging her not to be.

“W-w-we did, but not like…this. Not here,” Shuichi huffs, glancing briefly over Kaede’s shoulder. “There’s no lock. Anyone could walk in.”

“It’s special enough that it’s worth it, don’t you think? I really want to try this with you. I think we’ll be amazing together.”

“Oh,” Shuichi blushes, drawing one of her hands to her mouth, looking away. “I-if you say so. I guess I don’t mind. Thank you.”

Kaede perches her shoulders on the frame of the piano to allow her arms more range, carefully maintaining her arched back. Her fingertips delicately touch down on the keys. Stroking the lip of the keyboard with her fingers, she sighs. 

“It’s something I’ve thought about a lot. I still get stage fright sometimes, as embarrassing as that is to admit. I have some tough critics out there! Thinking about doing something like this just melts away the fear, you know? I slip into the fantasy and get carried away with it, and before I know it, I’ve nailed the performance.”

“I…I don’t even know which part of that to comment on…I can’t believe that’s the kind of thing you think about when you perform…”

Shuichi takes hold of one of Kaede’s thighs, her touch as soft and feathery as a downy pillow. 

“You’re making me sound like a total pervert…” Kaede laughs, feeling the embarrassment finally rise on her own cheeks. “When you put it like that…Oh my god,” she laughs again, dismayed. "Is it really that bad?"

Shuichi recoils sadly. “S-sorry. I wasn’t insinuating anything…”

“Don’t you have things like that?” Kaede presses indignantly. “Things you go to when you’re feeling a little lost?” 

“Sure I do,” Shuichi says. “Why?” 

“If you understand that, then can you think of this as a dream come true for me? For when I need a memory more than I need a fantasy to get me through, I want you to be one I'm thinking of.”

“Oh…” The way Shuichi’s heart pops like a confetti canon shows in a bright, glowy pink as she desperately tries to maintain her steely expression. “I’ll…I’ll try not to disappoint you, then.”

“You won’t, Shuichi. You couldn't.”

Shuichi nods, resolute. Shuichi’s chest rises and falls steadily, creeping a hand along Kaede’s thigh. Her fingertips nip past the lace border of her panties and Kaede's back nearly dips into the keys.

Gravity shifts as Shuichi finally strokes along her slit, slicking her fingers up. Shuichi teases her finger incrementally until it slips inside her easily, as meticulous and careful as always. When Shuichi draws back fully, then sinks as deeply inside as she can, Kaede sees stars. Her head drops back instantly, a single tone of shaking approval slipping over her lips from the back of her throat, carnal in the most delicate way.

Shuichi takes Kaede's open display to heart, setting into a rhythm that keeps Kaede’s breath hitching in a fixed incline, up and up and up. She reenters with two fingers and Kaede finds less conscious effort keeping her back curved away from the keyboard. She angles her hips down to push herself further into Shuichi’s fingertips, moans spilling freely as the pressure builds and builds.

“Can I use both hands?” Shuichi asks gingerly as she pushes and pulls into Kaede.

Kaede nods quickly, the hair caught on her shoulders slipping behind her like quick silk with her feverish gesture. Her words come in a struggle around her strained breath. “It’s perfect, I think…” Her fingers ghost along the keys, articulate and composed despite the way her body is melting out from under her, snapped into place only by the apex of her spine. “Don’t say anything else, just keep…I think…”

Shuichi leans in and licks the thumb on the hand she’s holding Kaede’s leg with. She shifts Kaede’s thigh into the crook of her elbow. She slips into Kaede’s underwear from the other end, stroking her clit in tandem. Kaede's eyes fall shut with her hypersensitive writhe, attempting to ride the added tension into a steady current, feeling the electricity settling at the tips of her fingers.

“That’s it, that’s perfect…oh, just like that. I know exactly what to play…Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.” 

Kaede presses deeply into the long first note. It tapers out slowly, filling the room with its sound until the next note ambles along behind it, tapping it on the shoulder, passing the baton.

And then another follows. The notes stroll into the other easily, pulling at one another with contrasting length, the sway of authority juggled in playful variegation. 

Shuichi matches her, rocking her palm with a curl of her fingers at the end of each slow, lilting measure.

Kaede is playing _Love Dream No.3_ , a composition with a centered climax. The second half comes from her limp as a noodle, laughing blissfully as Shuichi regains her breath, enraptured by the song and the heaving girl in her lap playing it.

♯♯♯

Kaede is kissing along Shuichi's neck, pulling open the buttons of Shuichi's black, double-breasted jacket.

“I read the poems,” Shuichi mumbles. She gives no protest as Kaede slips her jacket over her shoulders and grabs her breasts through the crisp cotton of her button-down shirt. 

“What poems?” 

No protest at all, as Shuichi leans into the touch, her eyes lidding more with every slow blink.

"Shuichi?"

“The…the poems that inspired Liszt’s Love Dreams. I was…I was, ah, able to find them in the library…”

“Oh really?” Kaede says, all air, no substance. Shuichi shivers as it rolls across her nape. “Even I don’t know much about that. You’d be a great accompaniment on tour, really.”

Kaede sighs, her head lolling into Shuichi’s shoulder. Momentarily, she imagines them somewhere else, somewhere that's brightly lit with racks of clothing, clear of fussy hairstylists and makeup artists.

“Oh, imagine it, Shuichi…messing up all my makeup right before I go on stage, my shirt bunched up all wrong. Imagine if anyone found out!” Kaede squeals as she winds herself up. “Oh, it’s so sexy! I can’t take it! It’d be so thrilling, so daring! Ahh…!” 

“I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble,” Shuichi says absently as Kaede fondles her through giddy excitement. “B-but…it is a little fun in that way, I agree. It’d be like something right out of a romance novel, heh.” 

“Right? It’s so dreamy,” Kaede coos. “Ah! What was it you were going to say about those poems?”

“O-oh,” Shuichi says, just a little frazzled as Kaede begins work on the three tall buttons on the high collar of her shirt. “It might be…difficult to tell you like this. Even though they’re short, the…the poems.”

“Do your best,” Kaede cheers as she pulls Shuichi’s shirt open and sizes up her breasts. She can’t control herself anymore, shoving her hands under Shuichi’s bra and grabbing Shuichi’s tits, squeezing them in her hands, cooing in excitement. Shuichi’s breath rattles as Kaede fawns over her. "Go on," Kaede teases.

“E-each…installment, was dedicated to a poem. So…” Shuichi’s knees begin to draw inward. “There were three of them. Three…poems.”

“Mhm…” 

“The first…is about, exalted…love. A martyr casts her love aside to…to…” Shuichi doesn’t even notice she is leaning so far back on the bench until it’s harder to not just lay down. She gives in to her crumpling arms and lays down. On her back, she covers Kaede’s hands with her own and shuts her eyes. “The…narrator, she calls love…intoxicating. She casts it aside at the gates of heaven, saying she has had enough for a lifetime.”

“I’m not so smart,” Kaede laughs. She takes pleasure in the way Shuichi’s lips twitch, like she's biting back a remark of her own. “What about the second poem?”

“The second poem, the speaker sees…” Shuichi lifts her hips up pliantly, allowing Kaede to tuck the hem of her skirt underneath her. “The speaker experiences death, death caused by, by love. Blissful death.” 

“Blissful death,” Kaede repeats. “I can understand that, I think.” 

Kaede moves off her knees and straddles the bench, closing the space between their hips. She leans over Shuichi through her legs, her hands placed sturdy in the empty spaces next to Shuichi’s waist. Her hair swoops over her face on one side as her hair pins lose their stationing. “And the part I played?”

“The third poem is the longest…consequently, it’s the one I liked it the most.” Kaede crawls off the bench and onto her knees. Shuichi slides easily as Kaede pulls her by the hips to the edge of the bench. “It’s about…uh, about unconditional love. Love that acknowledges an end, and…”

“And?” 

“…Doesn’t waste a moment. ‘Love as long as you can,’” Shuichi says. Kaede slides Shuichi’s underwear off, careful not to catch the loops on Shuichi’s lace-up boots. “‘Love as long as you can,’” Shuichi repeats, a ghost from her lips. “That’s what the poem says. Over and over, 'Love as long as you can.'”

Kaede settles herself between Shuichi’s thighs and brings her tongue forth.

“Oh, Kaede…” 

♯♯♯

For unknown reasons, Kaede’s lab becomes something of a common area, like the library or the cafeteria. It’s not even her playing that draws the others in, sometimes they’re there before her and Shuichi get there, loitering around like they have nowhere better to be and nothing better to do. It’s like everyone knows exactly what happens in the piano room and does their best to make sure it's used as intended.

Case in point, Kaede is knuckles deep in Shuichi’s third try on _Arabesque No.1_ when Rantaro walks in.

Rantaro appraises the room like she’s doing a house inspection and Kaede feels Shuichi’s internal temperature plummet. She makes a few rounds before she turns to Kaede and Shuichi from one of the far walls. "Don’t let me stop you, haha,” she says, ever-casual. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Ignore me, okay?” 

Neither of them know what exactly she is referring to, so Shuichi continues playing piano and Kaede continues fingering her while she plays. 

Shuichi performs better under pressure, it seems. She nails the song right up until Rantaro circles back out the door again. Then she plays an entire octave with her face.

♯♯♯

Shuichi kicks the door shut behind her and comes in hoisting a plate up in each hand.

“Forget breakfast in bed, breakfast in piano is where it’s at!” Kaede cheers as Shuichi strides towards her with her head dipped in bashfully, poorly concealing her dorky, appreciative smile. 

When Shuichi is close enough for Kaede to see what’s on the plates, she squeals excitedly.

“You remembered when I said this is my favorite dish!” Kaede claps her hands together. “God, I love you so much!” 

Shuichi drops both plates on the floor.

“I love you too,” Shuichi says. 

Shuichi's quiet voice is deafening in the wake of two glass dishes smashing to pieces in a room built for percussion.

♯♯♯

Really and truly, Shuichi and Kaede are just practicing when Kokichi busts in. Really and truly.

Kokichi comes wheeling in on a _unicycle_. She’s clearly unpracticed, _whoa-hoa_ ing with her arms waving out around her every time she wobbles on the stupid thing.

“What’chya dooooo-iiiing?” She carts herself in a circle around the room. “Haaaaving fuuuuun?” 

“Out,” Kaede and Shuichi say in unison. 

Kaede whips her shoulder back to look at Shuichi, the _'Damn,_ _girl!'_ written all over her open mouth and excited eyes. Shuichi blushes.

“Yeesh…I didn't even ask to join you guys yet and you're already fucking right in front of me. Oh, shit,” Kokichi nearly loses her balance attempting one of her theatrically snobby pouts. “A-as the owner and sole proprietor of every secret society on this plane- _eeet,_ ” Kokichi wheezes over another death wobble. “Ddddon’t you think I’m pretty good at orgies by now? Ahah.” 

Kokichi is glistening with sweat.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Kaede says.

“Truthfully, getting in here was one thing, but leaving is really another, y’know?” Kokichi pedals herself in a secure, uniform ring. “Even a supreme leader gets stuck in a pickle every now and then. That’s why I collect stupid grunts like you guys to do the dirty work. The unpickling, so to speak. If you really want me out of here, you’ll get up and open the door for…for me. Whoa.”

Kaede and Shuichi look at each other. Then they look back at Kokichi. She is sweating profusely, tilted just a smidge off-axis and locking herself into a tight circle. She’s panting until she makes a full recovery, finding herself upright and zig-zagging around the room again. She cheers for herself obnoxiously, hooting and hollering.

“Get out,” Kaede says. “We are in the middle of practice.”

Kokichi rolls her eyes, stopping herself from moving about the room by pedaling back and forth in little half-strokes like she’s finally figured out how to tread in a pool only after learning how to swim in it.

“You’re both so uncultured,” Kokichi says, her arms now balancing easily to her sides as she wades a gentle current with her pedaling. “Don’t you guys know that when a clown shows up on a bike, it’s the mark of the story shifting towards the surreaaaal? Thank post-neorealism Italian cinema for that one. The war really messed those guys up.”

All Shuichi has to say is, “You’re supposed to be a clown…? That’s what your outfit is?”

“Duh,” Kokichi states. 

“Oh,” Shuichi says.

“For the love of god,” Kaede exhales, standing herself up. She marches over to the door and opens it bluntly. 

Kokichi ignores her. Kaede slaps the wood of the door with the flat of her palm. Kokichi ignores that too.

“Hmm,” Kokichi says, striking another pose that narrowly throws her onto the floor. “I think I’m gonna go seize the day or whatever. You guys are boring and suck a lot! I hope you guys die until you're dead!” 

Kaede slaps the door again. 

Kokichi whirls out of the room with a snicker and Kaede shuts the door behind her. Hard. 

Kaede sighs, catching an exasperated fall against the door. “You seriously…her thing is totally looking like a clown, right? Or like a jester or something? What did you think she was?”

“I…”

“Nevermind,” Kaede rolls her eyes with a doofy smile. “I don’t think unicycles count as bikes anyway, so we’re probably safe.” Kaede shakes her head, pinching the bridge of her nose with a laugh. “Geez. Whatever. Let’s just get back to practicing already.”

♯♯♯

Kaede has always felt ridiculous playing Tchaikovsky. As Shuichi begs for help from the center of the room, she feels no competition. Shuichi looks downright goofy as she holds her arms out in front of her, stepping back and forth awkwardly with this pathetic look smeared over her face.

“You look like we’re playing charades and you want me to guess you’re a hula hoop,” Kaede calls to her.

Shuichi holds her hula hoop stance firm even as her shoulders droop miserably. “T-tell me what to do, then.”

“Pretend I’m over there with you, duh!” Kaede says over the twinkly little trills that trademark _Waltz of Flowers_. “Where would you hold me?” 

“You’re just trying to make this as embarrassing for me as possible.”

Kaede flicks her nose up along with a particularly mocking, fluttering trill. “Am not.” 

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Shuichi mopes aloud. She parts her hands, one hand moving upward to join with her invisible partner’s, the other moving down to brace the small of another’s back. She spins around in a lazy circle. She returns to a moronic shuffling that clicks her heels together, cutting across the floor like a pair of scissors opening and closing in the hands of a child still developing their fine motor skills.

“Neither have I,” Kaede says. “I’m always the one playing at these kinds of things, so I only get to watch from afar, if at all.” 

“So-so-so you know what this is supposed to look like!” Shuichi balks in the middle of another twirl, her footing clumsy over her chunky, heeled boots. “You’re totally over there making fun of me!”

“Am not!” she lies. Her fingers dance over the keys like the tulle-skirted ballerinas she's played this song for. “Spin, Shuichi!

“Are too!” Shuichi spins on command. “Ugh…”

Kaede’s cracking up. “What was it Miu called you the other day? Whipped? You’re so whipped!” The piano bench grinds into the floor as she stands up quickly, the harshness of the scraping swallowed up by the lack of pause in her playing. “Dance, Shuichi, dance!”

Shuichi chooses to stop dignifying her with responses. Instead, she opts to throw the remainder of her dignity away by spinning in more stupid, heavy-footed circles. And, oh, Kaede finds it so very delightful.

♯♯♯

_The Snow is Dancing_ both inside and outside. Or, really, the snow is only dancing outside since this song is far beyond Shuichi’s skill level. Kaede takes over with one hand and leaves Shuichi the easier section, rocking into her neck with kisses and hiking up her skirt.

The easier section does not get easier for Shuichi as the snow pats against the window irregularly, a metronome sent from the frozen layer of hell itself. Kaede thinks idly about the presence of snow and the passing of time, but something about that thought strikes her badly, like the onslaught of a sudden fever that brings one to immediately lay down and rest. She refocuses her attention to Shuichi’s messy plunking, reminding her to keep her hands light and her pressure sparing until they meet the part of the song that demands weight. The parts of the song where their hands overlap to play the black keys and white keys together sound the best, Kaede thinks. She tells Shuichi to keep that energy when playing the other parts with a chaste kiss along her jaw.

Shuichi doesn’t jump out of her skin when a knock sounds on the door but Kaede nearly does. Kaede supposes Shuichi can just be kind of a tunnel-visioned person, someone who seeks to do correctly and thoroughly if she’s going to do at all, and loses herself in that moment. She decides to leave her to it. Kaede hopes it’s okay to call the knocker inside as she hastily fixes Shuichi’s skirt for her with her free hand. 

It’s just Kirumi who enters, bowing politely before offering to do some simple cleaning. Kaede flusters over how messy her lab suddenly looks, like it never really hit her that she could be keeping it tidy herself. She’d offer Kirumi to just stay and listen for a while, but the state of her lab would be an insult to ask someone to sit in for entertainment. So she leaves her to it.

Kirumi looks perfectly happy as she cleans, stepping in tempo to the song.

Shuichi finally breaks composure when Kirumi breaks face, applauding excitedly when Kaede and Shuichi finally play the song from start to finish, saying she has heard Shuichi improve dramatically just over the short time she’s been cleaning and that she’s a fantastic protege. They both look severely embarrassed by the outburst of emotion as Shuichi hurries to play another round and Kirumi dutifully switches her cleaning supplies out like she's hinged on rusted bolts.

Kaede can’t shake the feeling that something is off, but she doesn’t think too hard about it. Shuichi seems to pick up on this in the way Kaede is playing, looking concerned as the notes ring from Kaede’s fingers just a little differently than they were before. But Shuichi does not say anything about it, she just plays on. 

♯♯♯

Kaede walks into her lab to find Angie leading Himiko around the room. The two of them are followed by something that sounds like Tenko but looks like an enormous pile of very shiny, very glittery spaghetti. Curious about what everyone seems to need to do in her lab all the time, Kaede rests in the doorway unnoticed. She observes.

“Nyahaha, right here is perfect! Atua says!” 

The silver and gold spaghetti pile teeters blindly toward the direction of Angie’s voice. Himiko grabs a tinsel noodle and unravels it away from a pair of sad, green eyes with bottom lashes like the sharp, diametric points on a compass rose. Another loop peels away and reveals that Tenko is smiling ear to ear. Kaede snickers at how ridiculous the entire image is, careful not to bring attention to herself.

Angie hoists Himiko up with surprising strength, jostling her tiny hip up on her shoulder like she's a small child. Himiko still struggles to tack the garland to the wall even with the additional height, aching aloud that her “MP’s run dry. Can’t geddit ‘ny high'r.”

Tenko explodes out of her prison of metallic wreathings, shouting, “T-Tenko’s got it! She’s taller!”

Himiko plops to the ground. When Angie moves to grab Tenko by the waist, Tenko wails but freezes in place. Angie is unflinching and Tenko is too stubborn to back down even in her miscommunication, so Tenko slaps her most convincing look of determination onto her face and Angie looks sick with joy as she brings Tenko up by no more than a couple feet. As mechanical as a hole puncher moving along the top of a page, Angie and Tenko make quick and silent work of hanging the walls. Himiko feeds the tinsel string to Tenko through a donut she’s formed with her fingers like a thread through a needle.

Kaede gently shuts the door which alerts the three of them to her presence, but they pay her no mind. She smiles and maneuvers around the trio, seating herself at the piano.

Since Kaede is alone today, she resumes working on the pet project Shuichi suggested she pick up to keep herself occupied. She is adapting the Trinity Carols for piano, a 15th-century manuscript by an unknown composer. She’s been working on her favorite carol from the manuscript, _There is No Rose of Such Virtue._

Kaede’s face scrunches. Alone today, huh? She wonders where Shuichi is, pulling her nose out of the sheets stacked on the music rack. Surveying the room, she finds it strange. She never heard Angie, Tenko, and Himiko leave, but the room is empty.

Shrugging off some misplaced anxiety, she resumes working on the pet project Shuichi suggested she pick up to keep herself occupied. She is adapting the Trinity Carols for piano, a 15th-century manuscript by an unknown composer. She’s working on her favorite carol from the manuscript, _There is No Rose of Such Virtue,_ when Shuichi pops her head in. 

Relief washes over Kaede and she hurries to make a seat for Shuichi. Shuichi sits next to her.

Kaede leans into Shuichi as she sits, bathing in the amber glow of the late evening. The garlands glint and wink as the sun falls away from the sky.

“Seems they got this room too,” Shuichi chuckles. “It looks nice. It’s kind of homely like this.”

Kaede leaves her note on a sostenuto, dramatically tearing into it with the chorus of a different song.

Shuichi tilts her head. Kaede can feel her hair on top of her own. “Deck the Halls…?”

“Bingo,” Kaede laughs. She stops playing, abruptly pulling the fallboard shut. “It is a bit homely, isn’t it? The decorations and everything?”

“A bit,” Shuichi agrees. “Maybe too homely.” 

A single puff of air escapes Kaede's nose with a smile. “Maybe that’s it.”

“That’s what?” 

“Nothing,” Kaede says. “Just a thought I’d rather not have.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Shuichi says. “But I…think about it too. You aren’t alone, you know.”

Kaede smiles despite how much her face hurts. There’s a pinching in her sinuses like she’s been holding back tears for some inordinate amount of time, forcing back a sob that’s been burning to rip out of her. But now is not the time for that. She has everything she could possibly need right next to her. So instead she says, “What would I do without you, Shuichi? You’re the only reason I’m still here.”

Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? The truth that tethers both her and Shuichi to this piano bench, the truth that stops them both from floating away?

The words feel stupid leaving her mouth but they bring Shuichi to tears anyway.

♯♯♯

Shuichi is sat to her left, her eyes neither focused nor unfocused. She seems affected by the soft yellow of the early morning, brought into the same command of stillness that is only leaving Kaede twice as restless. They haven’t spoken much the last couple of days.

Kaede’s fingers sit lightly at the lip of the keyboard. Shuichi sits quietly to her side. Kaede wants to say something but cannot find the words. They’ve both agreed that sometimes there are not words, but something’s different. It doesn't feel like one of those times. There is no twitch in her fingers to open up the room, only a weight that settles her palms in bad form. It doesn’t feel right.

The way Shuichi is sitting is unnerving her. It’s quiet and restrained, but not with the usual edge of her apprehensiveness, or even the thick fog that comes with being up at an hour so early. Kaede is remarkably not tired, yet she still cannot recall the walk to her lab, or even rolling out of bed, or the point in which she met up with Shuichi. All she remembers is this room. It doesn’t feel right at all.

Shuichi sits posed like a mannequin that has been left in an attic for a very, very long time. Still, and undisturbed. Like something is missing. Like something is gone.

Kaede begins to play. 

The first notes feel unfamiliar and reveal themselves as they come in greater, more composed strength. It unfurls like a story that answers the questions posed in the beginning as it adopts its pace and structure. She is playing Ravel’s _Pavane for a Dead Princess._

This composition is not one she has ever played for the sake of her own heart. Rather, she has only played this piece the same way one watches a sad movie to feel something they have never experienced or reads a tragic story to ache for people they have never met. This song is not about anyone who has ever existed. It’s a shakeable snow globe of a past era through the eyes of an onlooker born only centuries later, a bottled nostalgia for customs never experienced and a life never lived. A fabricated memory glued to a real place with real people with real feelings. 

Kaede does not know why she is crying. She is not thinking of anyone in particular.

Kaede is grateful, suddenly, for Shuichi’s utter lack of imposition in this moment. This isn’t a feeling she could begin to parse in any meaningful way, not even with her playing. The sound of her tears plunking into the fabric of her skirt misses the mark every time. It's a terrible and discordant pulse that seers into the already broken rendition of a song she has never played less than perfect. She feels Shuichi must understand and that is why she does not move to comfort her. She does not move to ask her what is wrong. She does not even pull her attention to Kaede’s playing like she usually does, silent with rapt admiration. She is still and undisturbed, like a fixture of the room that has always been there, collecting dust upon itself. She must understand. That is the explanation Kaede gives herself. She must understand.

The last few lines of this piece command attention in a way the rest of the song does not, laying to rest something larger than itself, an epithet to a chapter long closed. Kaede plays the outro softly and slowly, rippling in the same sparse, tiding melancholy as the rest of the song, like a moon that pulls the ocean along gently, never forcing the riptide to welcome the morning of another day. It’s all wrong, but Shuichi must understand.

When the room is still, Kaede speaks without direction like the words will simply dissolve once they leave her mouth.

“We’ll get out of here, won’t we?” 

Shuichi does not respond.

“We will, won’t we…?”

She receives no answer.

♯♯♯

Shuichi is sat primly at the piano, playing at exactly the wrong tempo. Kaede is bewildered. Every other part of her execution is perfect. Shuichi has been an excellent student, someone who could have pursued music in another life. Maybe it could have been this one had it not been stolen from her. 

That is when Kaede realizes Shuichi is not playing the song incorrectly, rather, she is speaking. These words are measured and intentional. They are fluent in a language Kaede has never spoken with anyone before. 

Each mesmerizing note falls heavy into the other, striking into the next pendulumic cradle of notes, steadily, ceaselessly…

Kaede has no idea how Shuichi is producing such a sound. She’s never heard anything like it. She begins to sway with the music. 

A love that never dies, a ceaseless love, Sheparding onward without stopping, without the need for an end or a beginning…

It’s beautiful. 

It’s everything. 

She can’t wait to get out.

She twirls with empty arms.

Dead center, Kaede stops, her figure illuminated by one of the windows. Her hands rise above her head as if conducting. Her unbuttoned cuffs hang open, fragile and translucent like the wings of an insect. The window catches Kaede by the wrists of her raised arms in the shadow of its lattice and pins her to the bright white sheet of moonlight on the floor.

Her face is crossed in two strokes of black.

Shuichi plays _Mariage D’Amour_ for as long as she can remember.

♯♯♯

Shuichi pops a CD into the player. Kaede recognizes the song immediately. 

“Serville’s Mariage D’Amour?” Kaede inquires, not masking her surprise. “Isn’t that a bit moody?”

Shuichi approaches her, stopping just within arms reach. “Sure, but I like it," she says. "Do you want me to put something else on? I don’t mind. It’s just the first thing I thought of.” 

“No, I’m just surprised it’s what you picked for a dance, that’s all.” Kaede offers her hand out to Shuichi. “It does suit you, though. It’s serious in this sexy, almost intoxicating way! And you’ve been playing that one really well lately. We should totally dance to it.” 

“Really?” Shuichi takes Kaede’s hand in hers, blushing around a sincere smile. They bring their joined hands high to their side, taking one another’s backs.

"Absolutely," Kaede nods brightly.

“That makes me happy. Thank you," Shuichi says warmly, her hand gripping Kaede's tighter. "There’s something mysterious about it that drives me to figure it out…to play it right. The minor key makes it sound so…sad, like it’s about something, or someone, who’s been forgotten, or maybe lost to time. It really speaks to me when I hear it.”

“Ah,” Kaede whimpers, dipping closer to Shuichi as her breath escapes her. “Stop it! You’re speaking directly to _me_ like that!” 

“Sorry,” Shuichi laughs. “I guess that was embarrassing to say.” 

“It’s not.” Kaede rights herself, pulling their hips closer together. “It wasn't.”

Shuichi smiles bashfully under determined eyes. “Are you ready…?”

“Of course I am!"

They ready their lead, turning their faces forward.

_“One, two, three…”_

**Author's Note:**

> even though this fic was brought to you by classical music, the song i listened to most while writing this was [amore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN4jtr2Ybsg) by ryuichi sakamoto. 
> 
> the bit ouma says about italian cinema and clown symbolism is, to my current knowledge, not true? i solidly believed it was true until i fact checked it for this fic lol. i went through cognitive dissonance clearly remembering when and where i read it, so now you guys get to eat it as a kokichi branded lie. uso fucking dayo, i say into a mirror.
> 
> by the way, if you don't know about Shepard tones, [they're really fucked up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone). 
> 
> also the art is mine, please don't reuse. 
> 
> & lastly thank u SO MUCH for reading!! if you want to tell me what you think of this piece, please do! fic comments are the absolute light of my life, and on this work in particular, i'd especially love that. this was a really fun story to write but it's one of those ones where i just have no idea how it's going to read to someone else when i kept a lot of the explanation for this story and why its happening vague. if you have a theory, i'd love to hear it. either way, thanks for reading, reader!


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